Jay’s Nights Out At Home – The Steak Bake

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these extracts from Jay Rayner's Nights Out At Home are going down a treat. The tale of the metre long cheese toastie (OK, I exaggerate slightly) boosted circulation. For those who have missed the review of the book itself and the previous article, a very brief explanation. I suggest not that Mr Rayner would serve to his nearest and dearest a slap up meal comprising a cheese toastie or, today's special, a steak bake. The whole book comprises recipes where Jay cooks his version of dishes which he has enjoyed out, across the whole  spectrum.

Today's dish is inspired by the iconic item sold by Greggs, the high street bakers. About 80 years ago, one John Gregg set up in business delivering eggs and yeast by bicycle to the the people of Newcastle. Ten years later, he chained up his bike and set up his first bakery shop, Greggs of Gosforth. There are now nearly 2500 of them across the country. Having the wit to see that it would be well nigh impossible to compete with the supermarkets on bread, the company evolved, specialising in food to go. They open early to attract the going to work crowd and, as Jay says, exploiting the fact that we Brits have always been a sucker for a well-made pie.

The steak bake was launched in 1999. Today, more than 45 million are sold every year, some to Jay. I've always admired the fact that his reviews are far more national than many, probably due to the fact that The Kitchen Cabinet travels round the country. For all I know, some of his steak bakes may have been consumed this side of Hadrian's Wall. But he may well be unaware of the impact which Greggs has had on the Lowland Scottish patois. In most of the country people go to Greggs: here one will probably go for a Greggs.

One final word of caution. Jay explains the economics of the restaurant business. (Regular readers should be aware of these.) For every 30p of ingredients, a retailer needs to charge about £1. A Greggs steak bake currently costs £2.40. Should Jay's recipe ever go into commercial production, the retail cost would have to be about 12 quid. He doesn't claim his product to be better, just different.

He does recommend proper beef stock, as opposed to using a cube. And who makes their own puff pastry? He is also an advocate of a pressure cooker for this. These things terrify me. I don't own one, though L says I ought to. You have to make sure that everything is allowed to cool properly at each stage. Hey! You've made pies before. You know that.

Ingredients (makes 6 steak bakes)

3 heaped tbsp plain flour; a good tsp garlic powder; salt and black pepper; 1kg braising steak or chuck, cut into 4cm cubes and trimmed of excess fat and connective tissue, so probably 1.2kg before the trim (you can also remove unwanted fat, etc. after it’s been braised and chilled); vegetable oil, for frying; 1 large onion, chopped; 500ml beef stock; 350ml veal jus; 1 tbsp tomato purée; 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce; 2 x 320g packets of shop-bought puff pastry; 1 beaten egg for egg wash.

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1. Put the flour and garlic powder into a bowl. Add a generous amount of table salt and use your hand to stir the mix together. Put the cubes of beef into the seasoned flour and mix around until they are all well coated.
2. Heat a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil in your pressure cooker or saucepan and brown the beef on all sides in batches, taking each batch out and putting it into a bowl to make space for the next. The flour will start to form a crust on the bottom. Watch the heat and make sure the flour crust doesn’t burn. You may need to add a little more oil for each batch of beef, as it does get absorbed by the flour.
3. When all the beef has been browned, turn the heat down, add the chopped onion and cook for a few minutes until soft. Again, you may need to keep it moving to stop the crusted flour from burning.
4. When the onion is soft, add the stock and the jus and as it heats up, use your wooden spoon to scrape up any of the crust on the bottom of the pan. When it gets to a simmer, add the tomato purée and Worcestershire sauce and stir it all in. Finally put the beef back in, with any juices that have been released. Season with a little salt and cracked black pepper. If you’re not using real beef stock and veal jus, use 850ml of beef stock from two cubes.
5. If you’re not using a pressure cooker, you will now need to braise this in a pan, half covered on a very low heat. Give it a stir every now and then to make sure it’s not scorching on the bottom. It should take about 2 hours for the meat to become tender, but it could need up to 3. Check by taking out a piece of beef and seeing if it will come apart easily when you pull at it with two forks.
6. If you are using a pressure cooker, put the lid on, bring to pressure and cook for 25 minutes. At the end of that I use a fast pressure release by pressing on the valve with a folded tea towel so as not to burn my hand. Steam burns are nasty.
7. Use a slotted spoon to transfer all the beef to a dish which can take it in one layer. Allow it to cool for 10 or 15 minutes. Meanwhile reduce the gravy by about a third if using the real stocks and by half if using the stock from cube. If you’re using the latter and it isn’t thickening properly, take a couple of tablespoons of the gravy and put it into a mug with a teaspoon of flour. Mix it to make a slurry, then reintroduce it to the gravy and continue to reduce. If you have cooked your beef on the hob, you may find that you don’t need to reduce the stock very much at all.
8. When the gravy is reduced, pour it over the meat. Allow that to cool for a further 10 minutes and then put it into the fridge for at least 3 hours. You want it all very cold and for the gravy to have turned into a jelly.
9. Two hours before you want to eat, make the steak bakes. The Greggs version measures 10cm × 12cm, so you need 6 sheets of pastry measuring roughly 10cm × 25cm. (The product I use, Jus-Rol, measures 23cm × 35cm, which allows for 3 per sheet of roughly these dimensions.) Spread them out across the greaseproof paper that the puff pastry comes on. Mark across the middle of each sheet, so you can see where the bottom half is.
10. Your beef should now be in a jellified gravy. If you want to take off any lumps of fat and connective tissue do so now. They will come away easily. Use a spoon (or your fingers; I’m not watching) to take pieces of the meat out with just a little of the jelly attached and arrange in a tight square in the centre of the bottom half of the pastry, leaving a 1cm border all the way around. You want it to be a generous filling. Egg-wash all the way around the pastry edges, then fold the top half of the pastry sheet over the filling and press the pastry edges of both halves together. Remember this is a home-made steak bake, not a mass-produced version. It will end up looking a bit rough and ready.
11. Go around the edges with the tines of a fork, to make little indentations that will help seal them, just like on a Greggs Steak Bake. Then lightly score the bulging surface on the diagonal from one corner to the other, making sure not to cut through the pastry. Generously egg wash the top of the steak bake. Immediately put back into the fridge to chill again for 90 minutes. Reserve what’s left of the egg-wash.
12. If making 6 small ones feels like a total faff, you can make 2 giant ones, using the whole 23cm × 35cm sheet. Follow the same instructions as above, only this time fill half the sheet with beef, but still leave the 1cm wide border. The key to either version is not to allow too much gravy in with the beef or it will leak. There will be enough with the jelly that’s attached.
13. An hour before you want to eat, heat the oven to 220°C/425°F/gas mark 7. Lightly oil two baking trays which are big enough to take the 6 steak bakes. Put them into the oven for 15 minutes until smokingly hot. Take the steak bakes out of the fridge. Egg-wash them again. Take the first oven tray out and put the steak bakes on, leaving the other one in there so it doesn’t get a chance to cool down. Once the first is in the oven, take out the second and repeat. Using very hot oven trays guarantees the bakes will have crisp rather than soggy bottoms. If you’ve made the giant steak bake it will be a little hard to move it across from the fridge, but it is doable, because you’ve chilled it and it has firmed up.
14. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden and crisp. From about 20 minutes in you may have to swap the oven trays around so they get equal amounts of time at the top. Despite your best efforts they may still leak a little gravy. Don’t worry. The Greggs ones do that too.
15. While they are baking, heat up the remaining gravy and any leftover beef in a saucepan.
16. Serve the steak bakes with extra gravy on the side.

Thanks again to Jay Rayner and to Annie Lucas of Penguin Books for permission to reproduce these recipes. At a mere £22 this is an ideal Christmas present for anyone who loves food. And also for yourself.